Photographing an illegible document

[davholla2 1]

A friend (not in the UK) has to photograph a document where some of the writing has faded - is there any way to bring this out?

 

[petrochemist157 182]

Careful lighting/filtering to increase the contrast between ink & paper might do the trick.
Specialist equipment can also allow things like IR & UV photography, which might help depending on the ink used.
IR sees through many inks so potentially helps read censored/altered texts, I've seen examples where reading text under an ink spill can be achieved this way.
If all else fails charing the paper can sometimes make the ink more visible, but this is a destructive technique that you probably wouldn't want to try

 

[Hardus Nameous156 104]

Maybe try orthochromatic film? I remember hearing somewhere, perhaps on this site, about someone getting some writing on old crates to show up that way.